Time Travel paradox stories

[elfdragonlord]

I hope this is in the right place.

Anyway, I'm quite interested in reading Time Travel stories. But I find it hard to find the really good ones.

Can anyone recommend me any Time Travel stories that involve paradoxes, time loops and other weird time muddles.

novel length or short story, I don't mind which.

 

[dwndrgn]

Kage Baker's Company series is the first that comes to mind. Very good books.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

As a matter of fact, I just (a week or two ago) re-read a fantasy story, by Tanith Lee, which includes time travel, a paradox of sorts, and a time loop. It's called The Winter Players.

Anyway, if you look at this article and go down the page you will eventually come to a section on time travel in TV, movies, and literature, including the different kinds of paradox that may arise and some of the stories that make use of them.

Time travel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Quokka]

If you do a search you should find a few old threads with heaps of suggestions. I always liked Gregory Benfords Timescape which doesn't actually involve people time traveling but communication through time.

 

[Caledor]

Try Timegods World by L. E. Modesitt Jr

 

[BookStop]

Eyre Affair - Thursday's father is chronoguard and he's often changing time, looping things etc, in the series.

Replay by Ken Grimwood is pretty good, gritty, and looped.

 

[Fried Egg]

"Dr Futurity" by Phillip K Dick - A right old tangled web of time travel and causation.

 

[chrispenycate]

You have to have read "All you zombies", by Heinlein, and might as well add "By his bootstraps"

 

[Hypnos164]

The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers - which is a fantasy masterwork for many reasons; of which time loops/paradoxes are only one.

also

Three Days to Never by Tim Powers - more contemporary time travel, conspiracy, secret history and Einstein!

 

[Fried Egg]

Oh, the novella "Great Work of Time" by John Crowley is a great, intricate tangle of time travel and causation.

 

[mosaix]

The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.

An excellent read. I looked for ages to find holes in the complicated story line - there aren't any.

 

[Taltos]

Can anyone recommend me any Time Travel stories that involve paradoxes, time loops and other weird time muddles.

I liked the conclusion in John Brunner Times Without Number - that even if timemachine is discovered it will produce a closed loop - a someone will go back and change event that made this discovery possible.
Also from classics - Simak likes to solve a lot of problems with time travel.

 

[Dave]

I also like Time Travel Paradox stories. The classic is probably Ray Bradbury's Sound of Thunder but Larry Niven's Hanville Svetz series - Flight of the Horse, Rainbow Mars - are good.

I'd also recommend the Heinlein suggestions and Benford's Timescape and even The Time Travelers Wife, as well as Michael Moorcock's Behold The Man and Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships.

The best story of multiple paradoxes has to be David Gerrold's The Man Who Folded Himself. It is out of print but I managed to get it from the library.

 

[Duchessprozac]

There's the novel Millennium by John Varley, which I read many years ago and found fascinating. It goes on about paradox at length and the tale is based around fixing a paradox created after a futuristic weapon is lost in the present whilst kidnapping people from an imminent plane crash.

It was turned into a movie in the late 80s but I found the movie to be rather poor compared to the book.

 

[elfdragonlord]

There's the novel Millennium by John Varley, which I read many years ago and found fascinating. It goes on about paradox at length and the tale is based around fixing a paradox created after a futuristic weapon is lost in the present whilst kidnapping people from an imminent plane crash.

It was turned into a movie in the late 80s but I found the movie to be rather poor compared to the book.

This one sounds especially good. Thanks

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

The Time Patrol by Poul Anderson.

 

[JagLover]

The Saga of the Exiles by Juliun May involves time travel (going back 6 million years) and a paradox of sorts. But it isn't really the main point of the story.

The series is very good however.

 

[elfdragonlord]

The Time Patrol by Poul Anderson.

I've got a collection of these stories from the library at the moment.

There's not much paradox though - everything seems fated, nothing goes wrong with time.

I don't know why but I like time travel stories where something goes wrong with time.

 

[clovis-man]

The first response in the thread by DWNDRGN would be my recommendation as well. Kage Baker's entire series of Company novels deal with paradox issues and the concatenation of events to avoid them. One of the themes is that history cannot be changed, but there are players in the stories who dispute that and work to prove it, sometimes as a means of survival. Her short stories include some Company themes also. Great reads and fascinating subjects.

Start with In The Garden Of Iden and immediately read Sky Coyote next. If you do that you will be hooked.

Ms. Baker died an untimely death late last year, but her output will live well beyond.

 

[greyhorse]

"To Say Nothing of the Dog" by Connie Willis.

Somewhat slow paced, but very well researched. Probably the most realistic book about time travel paradoxes I've read. "The Doomsday Book" also by Willis is less about paradoxes but is easily the best time travel book I've read.